16. Knocking on Doors
KNOCKING ON DOORS
COLE
Giving Junie space when she’s implanted like an atom in the very foundation of my being is harder to do than I anticipated.
She asked me to stop knocking on doors. She was right to ask. I’m walking a very thin line that’s become blurrier the longer she’s here.
The problem is, I’ve never wanted anything the way I want her.
And I’m tearing apart my life to find a solution. I’m blowing up walls and even hired a private investigator to follow Natalie, but it’s all leading nowhere.
It’s cruel and unusual punishment for a crime I didn’t commit, but I’ve committed to ending this. Even if that means coming clean eventually and hoping for the best.
The only problem I have been able to solve is confirming that Natalie isn’t on the guest list for the Meridian Award banquet. Thank God for small miracles because I needed this win today.
Even Nana Mae has been suspiciously quiet since Junie and I became the main characters of The Haven’s real-life reality show drama. She dropped dinner off at my desk three hours ago, with a pitying look and an acknowledgment that I look as bad as Junie does.
Now it’s nine p.m., and my pencil has just torn through the vellum. Again. My head drops to my drafting table with a thunk. “Get your shit together, Whittaker.”
“Sorry.”
I snap my head up to find Junie standing in the doorway. It’s like I’m intentionally inviting trouble into my life now because I’m not nearly as anal about locking that damn door as I used to be.
“It was open. I just—” Apparently the doorjamb is more interesting than I am because that’s where she directs her focus.
My body jerks forward as though it wants to reach for her, hold her, keep her. But my mind shouts at me to stop.
She asked me to stop knocking, and I’m trying. I really fucking am. But when she’s in my orbit, two things happen. First, it just feels fucking right. And second, no matter how close I get, it’s never enough.
“Fen told me,” I say preemptively, assuming she’s here because Grace posted another video that shows Junie in all her Spite-Berry glory, but this one was from her sophomore year of college.
My gaze draws to her delicate shoulder she raises as if to say it’s fine. “Hudson has already sent a takedown notice. But that’s not—I wanted to ask you something.”
“You can ask me anything, Junie.” I just wish I could always give you an honest answer.
She frowns as though she heard the second part of my statement, and since I haven’t been sleeping, I hope to fuck I kept my internal thoughts to myself.
“It’s about the design competition Nana Mae entered you in.”
I dig deep for my composure and nod. “What about it?”
“She showed me the award ceremony invitation.”
Fuck. I didn’t go downstairs at all today, so I haven’t seen the mail, but I have no doubt that Nana Mae has it displayed prominently somewhere.
“Okay.” I cross my arms over my chest, and Junie recognizes it for what it is—a defensive stance that makes her stand straighter, preparing for a fight.
“It’s sponsored by Meridian.”
The sensation of snakes slithering through my bloodstream has the muscles in my shoulders tightening.
“Is that…? I mean, I remember that name.”
I stop breathing altogether. “What do you want to know?” My tone carries an edge that Junie doesn’t deserve.
Her hands ball into fists on her hips. “I know that once upon a time they were your dream. I know that you didn’t get your internship, though I never understood why.
I know that it must have broken something in you when you weren’t selected because you left us all shortly after you announced you’d chosen a different path. ”
She inches closer as her temper flares. “A path that you had never, not once, mentioned in all the years any of us have known you. All I ever heard was that you were going to work for Meridian.”
Meridian was where my mother worked. It was her legacy. Something I wanted to carry on…
Junie pokes me in the chest. Hard, her pointer finger feeling as though it’s made of steel. “You’re the reason I chose my dream job in seventh grade. I’d never known anyone as ambitious as you. And now, here we are.”
Barely six inches separates us now and still, she presses forward.
“You’re invited to an awards ceremony that obviously means a great deal to Nana Mae but must hit you in painful ways too.
So here I am, once again, putting myself out there to see if you’re fucking okay with going to a fucking gala for a fucking company who never fucking deserved you. ”
Her chest heaves.
Her eyes shine.
Juniper Mercer, in all her spiteful glory, has never looked more goddamn sexy.
“It’s…complicated.”
Her nostrils flare, and I recognize my own death sentence in her eyes. “Isn’t everything?” She’s growling now. So fired up on my behalf, I’d laugh if it didn’t hit me in all the sensitive, emotional parts of myself I’ve locked away.
Junie has always seen past my defenses, and because of other people’s choices, I can’t show her how much that means to me.
She paces the length of my office before spinning on me and pinning me with a feral-looking set to her jaw.
“I’m here until I’ve fixed your books, Cole.”
That’s the kill shot she’s been holding onto. And believe me, I fucking feel it.
“Will you be able to uncomplicate things before then?”
I almost lie just so I can remember what she feels like pressed against my lips. Just so I can taste her, experience her, love her.
But I’m already drowning in lies, and I won’t do that to her again.
“I don’t know.”
Her lips turn in as she bites down on them with an aggressive nod of her head, and the painful organ in my chest bursts into flames as she takes a slow stroll around my sanctuary.
Her gaze snags on the scrap paper on my desk.
“That’s not right.” She points to a joint calculation she wouldn’t understand, but she sees the math equation immediately. “The calculation is wrong.”
She’s so damn smart.
Beautiful.
Meant to be mine…but may never get to be.
“I know.” I offer a small smile. It feels like a breaking point between her and me. I can’t move forward, and she isn’t willing to sit in this purgatory with me for much longer—and I don’t blame her at all.
I’d never ask her to do that for me anyway—I have a six-year separation to prove it.
Then she moves to my shelves. They run floor-to-ceiling along the north wall, the one with no windows.
Archival tubes stand like soldiers on the bottom, labeled in my handwriting from years ago.
Flat files lay haphazardly in the middle.
And the top three shelves, running the entire length of the room, hold my sketchbooks.
She knows instantly what they are. She used to sit with me while I dreamed in those pages.
“You still do this?” she asks, proving a point. She knows I don’t dream that way anymore—if I did, she would have witnessed it already.
“No, Junie. Not since…”
Not since you.
Her hand lifts—not quite touching the spine of the nearest one.
“Go ahead,” I say.
Her smile cracks through her defenses as she takes down the first leather-bound volume and settles onto the floor in the corner of the room.
I only watch her for a moment. Three breaths. It’s all I can afford.
Then I stop lying to myself, cross my arms, and stare at the most stubbornly beautiful woman I’ll ever meet.
The book she chose is from my first year of grad school. The same one she studied over my shoulder when she was too young for me to be noticing she was hovering over my shoulder.
“This one.” Her eyes light up in recognition. This, right here, is why I’m watching her. This is a reaction that could quickly turn into an obsession.
She holds up the page she’s looking at with an integrated vertical garden—one of the concepts I was working on before the bottom fell out. I haven’t thought of that in years, but it holds some possibilities for Frank’s greenhouse.
“The load distribution for the green walls. Did you ever resolve it?”
I love the fact that she remembers these details. I hate the fact that it makes me fall for her even more.
“In theory,” I say quietly.
Her head snaps up from the design. “What does that mean?”
It means the math worked out and then the project didn’t. “It means I solved the engineering issue and then moved on to other things.”
A small sound of frustration leaves her throat, and it knocks me sideways.
She moves from the first book to the second, then the third, asking questions the way she used to, before outside forces ruined all hope of what could be.
The next one she selects is from my first year here. My designs are arguably…darker in this one. All my designs were, until I started working on The Haven.
That’s when I was a man who’d traded his career for his family and spent a lot of time drawing things he didn’t intend to show anyone.
I stop watching and stare at the ceiling.
If she wanted to know who I became when I left home, she’ll find him in that book. And because I’m not sure she’ll like who she finds, I turn away from her and focus on the blueprints for the community garden.
I lose track of time as we sit in companionable silence. Well, until her small gasp draws me back to her.
There are so many emotions flickering in her gaze as she stares at something in the sketchbook she’s holding. She doesn’t turn pages, and she doesn’t look up. She just sits with whatever she’s found on the page.
It only takes me two steps to see where she’s landed.
It’s a sketch of a porch. The crude, first renderings of what eventually became the porch on her dream house design. But it’s what sits on the porch that’s caught her attention, her pointer finger hovering just above it—a figure.
Her hair is loose. Down past her shoulders, the way it falls when she thinks no one is looking.
The figure sits on the top step with her knees pulled to her chest, her chin resting on them, turned slightly toward the lantern light.
The posture isn’t specific—it could be anyone, but we both know it’s not.
I don’t breathe as she studies it for a long time. Far longer than she’s looked at anything else. Her thumb is at the edge of the page, ready to move on but unable to do so.
I very carefully study the wall above her head.
“I didn’t know you still sketched people.” Her voice is soft, controlled, pitched to portray indifference, but fails in execution.
“I don’t. I never really did.”
I only ever drew her. Before. During. And after. I’ve only ever been able to draw her.
Slowly, like releasing us both from suffocating bonds, she turns the page, and I exhale a breath that burns like acid.
She studies my designs for another ten minutes. Then she stands and carefully replaces the book.
“Nolan will be here in a couple of days,” she says with her back to me.
“Yes.”
The boys. Nolan, Fen, Hudson. My best friends. Her family. The people who know us both well enough to see the truths and through the lies swirling around us. They’ll be in this house for four days, and I still have no idea how to proceed.
“I should go.”
I nod because if I open my mouth, I’ll beg her to stay.
She’s at the door when she looks over her shoulder. “About the gala…”
I swallow hard.
“I can be your friend if you need one, Cole. If I had to walk into Callahan Analytics right now, I don’t know if I could do it—even if I had you at my side. I guess what I’m saying is, just because it’s important to Nana Mae doesn’t mean it’s right for you.”
And just because you’re meant for me, it doesn’t mean I’m right for you.
What I say is, “Would you go? If you were me?”
She glances all around the room, then shrugs. “Probably, but I’m not you. I work best when no one sees me coming. I think the question you should be asking yourself is, who are you going for? This is one of those times when the answer should always be yourself—no one else.”
It’s a smart answer. A professional one. But all my questions have always led to her. “Thank you, Junie.”
“Goodnight, Cole.”
I don’t think I breathe until I hear the back door swing shut, then I turn to watch her walk across my driveway and up her stairs.
She turns on her light just as my phone buzzes. I dive for it, thinking it’s her.
It’s not.
Fen & Tonic:
Nolan: Thursday. We’re direct into Charleston.
Nolan: Hudson’s coming on Friday
Fen: I’m bringing the good Irish whiskey.
Fen: Tell Spite-Berry to clear her schedule. We’ve got plans, opinions, and the Wicked Witch of Boston to take down.
Hudson: I have more than opinions.
I set down my phone and stare out my window, directly into the eyes of Junie.
I’ve been saying not yet when it comes to her.
Well, not yet officially has a deadline, and she was the one to set it.